The unusual adaptation is known as Dehnel's phenomenon, named for Polish zoologist August Dehnel, who first described the ...

They found that the shrews’ brain cells lose water but crucially do not die, meaning that the animals retain their brain ...

The common shrew looks unremarkable, a few grams of fur and teeth scurrying under leaf litter. Yet this tiny mammal performs one of the strangest tricks in biology, shrinking its own brain and skull ...

It's not unusual for animals like bears to build their body mass in the lead-up to winter, stockpiling fat while dialing down their metabolism to endure the lean times ahead. With a life-expectancy of ...

New research shows how the Eurasian common shrew (Sorex araneus) changes its brain and bodily size throughout the year. The study, published online in eLife, reveals how changes in gene expression ...

Milestones in common shrew chromosomal research / Jan Zima and Jeremy B. Searle -- Introducing the common shrew / Nikolay A. Shchipanov, Jan Zima and Sara Churchfield -- Morphology and genetics of the ...

As winter approaches, humans in the higher latitudes might beat the cold by snuggling up under a pile of blankets or booking a timeshare in sunny Florida. Similarly, some animals cope with seasonal ...

Last autumn, I was canoeing in a quiet saltwater cove on the Maine coast when I realized I had a tiny stowaway onboard. A masked shrew (Sorex cinereus, also called the cinereus or common shrew) was ...

These are for editorial purposes relating to this press release and the study “Baldoni et al (2025) Programmed seasonal brain shrinkage in the common shrew via water loss without cell death. Current ...

3D brain of the common shrew, reconstructed from in vivo MRI scans. Different colors show different brain regions: neocortex (blue), olfactory bulb (light blue), enthorinal/piriform cortices (grey), ...